In Her Eyes
by okh-eshivar
Summary: Batman contemplates something he sees within the eyes of Poison Ivy, and Ivy suffers at the hand of the human she once was. R & R
1. Through Opaque

**Disclaimer: I own no one. **

Pamela Lillian Isley. A once-human, no longer human. The glass between you and her is thick, chilled to the touch. You pass her holding cell without the intention of stopping; you have other business in this hellhole, and she was but another demon lurking there.

You have encountered her before, many a time in fact, under the darkness of the same black cowl you wear now. This time however holds an unexplained difference for reasons that are not altogether comprehendible. You cast her a passing glance, a rolling browse. She is sitting on the hard titanium floor with her legs to the side and her gaze outward, a yearning gaze directed to her one true lover, the warm embrace of the afternoon sun. You pass, and your stare meets hers.

You stop.

_**Why did you stop?**_

There is something incredible in her forest emerald eyes. Something you've never seen there before, never seen _anywhere_ before. Something beautiful and frightening and rhythmic to the final sigh of an old woman. An old, sick woman, who wanted more than anything to die. Bittersweet, a light and gentle smile as the world comes caving in, as the sky cracks and the earth crumbles and everything buckles over like a drunken man in a city that's stopped caring about him.

And that something bittersweet is accompanied by a certain something old. Older than those crystal green eyes, older than the cowl and cape, older than the city and the country and the democracy on which it's built. Older than people. It paints her skin, her mind—what? What is it? It runs through her, buried deep in her veins, deep into the furthest recesses of her being and deeper still. It has become her. A guardian who has grown tired and weak with age, an infection that claimed its host in a time of great sorrow (Woodrue's work), a curse of greatest virtue. It consumed her heart and flesh and turned her into something else. Less human.

From a distance, her's is a dangerous song, a siren's whisper and a madman's scream, a tender gravity that pulls you close and drags you to the ground. Through the ground. But in the confinement of glass and plastic and metal, in a cold and lonely place that is the opposite of her, where the insane cackles fill the melodies of others', her song is a quiet and sorrowful one. A single, angel's voice, surrounded by demons. A war-worn angel that, in a mess of new wounds and old scars, took on the appearance of a demon; whose wings have been ripped forth from her body and halo shattered with her mind. A goddess, whom mortal men defiled and polluted and broke irreparably. A twisted, diluted, spirit, whose tune has been heard throughout the eras of time, whose voice people now ignore. A mother turned angry and vengeful by the deaths of her children.

There is something incredible in her eyes, and as that green skinned woman looks into the white lens of your cowl through the glass and the shadows of a madhouse in which she does not belong, you catch a single glimpse of it. It is a knowing, the whisper of a secret long forgotten to mortal ears. A promise, and a regret. A passing of time. A silent prayer to be heard.

And a human. There is a human in those eyes.

_**Fin **_

_**A/N: 16**__**th**__** birthday's coming up. Wish me luck. **___


	2. And In Emerald

There is a sorrowful thing in the air today. You sense it, and though the origin is without _place_, it sucks the light from your heart and closes around you with the weight of a **dreadful** sin. Are you at fault? Is it a sin of your creation, or the collective sins of the madmen around you? It is a question that, like the cackles of the demons around you, _**buzz**_ within your mind like a nest of agitated hornets.

It visits you every so often, this sorrowful thing; it sneaks in through the vents of your cell, crawls into your body like some toxic gas, and infects your blood and veins and your mind with a clarity you do not wish to have. A clarity, or perhaps a fog. It sews up the _rips_ and _tears_ in your damaged self with a thread of uncertainty, mends the cuts and bruises for all but a few hours before returning them baring _**twice**_ the pain, _**twice**_ the sorrow. It makes you feel vulnerable. It makes you feel human.

_**Human. **_

_That's not fair_, you think. _I am not human. _

But for here, for now, you become human, the human you were once.

_Pamela._

_Pamela Isley. _

There was a time when you missed her, when you would have given anything to be her again, to see the world through her eyes again, to walk and live and breathe like her again. She was a nearly unbearable loss; she died a horrible, crude, unmerciful death. She disappeared from world with a tortured scream rather than a final, gentle sigh.

_Too soon. _She didn't deserve it. The young ones never deserve it.

Perhaps_ she_ was that sorrowful thing—a lost soul with no rightful grave, no place to go or to return to. Perhaps she was that infectious disease. That beautiful cancer.

_I'm sorry_, you think. _I stole something precious from you._

A shadow makes its way across the wall of glass in front of you, its alabasten eyes glowing from its ebony mask. _Contrast._

As he passes, those opaque slits skim your cell with a certain lack of care. It reminds you that you are alone in this world, but more than that it reminds you of a time when you were not. Pamela's heart cries out within you for a single second, a agonizing, horridly sorrowful cry that echoes throughout your body and causes you to tremble; and it is that second in which his eyes settle on top of yours.

He stops.

_**Why did he stop? **_

He stares, inquiring. _Can he see it?___Pamela cries out again. _You must look away!_ But you do not. You can feel something within him, something deeper than mere sight_. Can he see who I am now, who I'm not anymore? _The thought nearly makes you cry, the idea that anyone could see the truths you bare and the secrets you hold. The corpse of a young woman whom you buried in the deepest recesses of your mind, tried to put to rest; the stubborn heart in your chest that refused to seize up, to freeze up; the quiet tears of a lost, dying girl whom the world chose to forget_. Did he forget?_

She cries again. _Do you want him to remember?_

…No.

You break the gaze, and look at the unwelcoming floor beneath you. His eyes linger; you feel them on your body, searching perhaps, inquiring perhaps. You wonder what the dark man saw; you want to scream, to beg him to tell you what he discovered within your emerald eyes. _Did you see her?_

_Can you see me? _

But when you look back to the glass, the shadow has already moved on, wordlessly, soundlessly, and once again, you are alone in a place in which you do not wish to be. Something was different, though. The weight, although still present, was less than before, more tolerable than before. Had he taken something from you with that gaze? Had he stolen a secret from you with those eyes, a secret you had had no wish to bear? Pamela is quiet now, her presence now lighter in her chest.

_He knows. He saw it_. You smile, though you cannot comprehend why.

You don't try to.

He saw it.

Pamela's heart thumps, warmer now,

And suddenly you aren't so lonely.


End file.
